Metal+Ball+Lab

toc

Metal Ball Lab
Ji Young Lee Lab Science 10 2B Partner: Victoria Chiao



Materials: 2 Meter sticks 2 Metal balls 1 Stop watch 1 Physics text book (ramp) Tape 1 Tape measure 

Procedure: 1. Create a ramp using two meter sticks, tape and your text book 2. Roll the ball down the ramp and time the trip from the start to finish 3. Record the time it took, and the distance the ball travelled 4. Repeat this process, so there are 5 pieces of data total and repeat again with a difference size ball.

  Raw & Processed Data: Metal Ball Lab Metal Balls and its Velocity and Acceleration
 * || Trial || Time (seconds) || Distance (m) || Velocity (m/s) ||
 * Big Ball || 1 || 4.09 || 2.54 || 0.621 ||
 * || 2 || 3.85 || 2.52 || 0.655 ||
 * || 3 || 4.31 || 2.53 || 0.587 ||
 * || 4 || 3.91 || 2.53 || 0.647 ||
 * || 5 || 3.86 || 2.50 || 0.648 ||
 * || || || Average Velocity: || 0.631 ||
 * Small Ball || 1 || 3.69 || 1.87 || 0.507 ||
 * || 2 || 3.67 || 1.89 || 0.515 ||
 * || 3 || 3.76 || 1.92 || 0.511 ||
 * || 4 || 3.63 || 1.88 || 0.518 ||
 * || 5 || 4.04 || 1.95 || 0.483 ||
 * || || || Average Velocity: || 0.507 ||
 * || Trial || Distance (m) || Time (seconds) || Velocity (m/s) || Average Acceleration (m/s²) ||
 * Medium Ball || 1 || 1.00 || 1.02 || 0.98 || 0.96 ||
 * || 2 || 1.00 || 1.21 || 0.83 || 0.68 ||
 * || 3 || 1.00 || 1.10 || 0.91 || 0.83 ||
 * || 4 || 1.00 || 1.18 || 0.85 || 0.72 ||
 * || 5 || 1.00 || 1.18 || 0.85 || 0.72 ||
 * || 6 || 1.00 || 1.05 || 0.95 || 0.91 ||
 * || 7 || 1.00 || 1.14 || 0.88 || 0.77 ||
 * || 8 || 1.00 || 1.18 || 0.85 || 0.72 ||
 * || 9 || 1.00 || 1.20 || 0.83 || 0.69 ||
 * || 10 || 1.00 || 1.39 || 0.72 || 0.52 ||
 * || Average || 1.00 || 1.17 || 0.86 || 0.75 ||
 * Small Ball || 1 || 1.00 || 1.36 || 0.74 || 0.54 ||
 * || 2 || 1.00 || 1.38 || 0.72 || 0.53 ||
 * || 3 || 1.00 || 1.37 || 0.73 || 0.53 ||
 * || 4 || 1.00 || 1.30 || 0.77 || 0.59 ||
 * || 5 || 1.00 || 1.32 || 0.76 || 0.57 ||
 * || 6 || 1.00 || 1.47 || 0.68 || 0.46 ||
 * || 7 || 1.00 || 1.20 || 0.83 || 0.69 ||
 * || 8 || 1.00 || 1.19 || 0.84 || 0.71 ||
 * || 9 || 1.00 || 1.34 || 0.75 || 0.56 ||
 * || 10 || 1.00 || 1.55 || 0.65 || 0.42 ||
 * || Average || 1.00 || 1.35 || 0.75 || 0.56 ||
 * || Average || 1.00 || 1.35 || 0.75 || 0.56 ||

Conclusion: The data concludes that the heavier, bigger ball has a slightly higher velocity than the small ball. The smaller metal ball travels less in a second compared to the bigger metal ball. The second part of the experiment involving acceleration shows that the bigger ball travels the same 1m in shorter time than the smaller ball, thus the velocity of the bigger ball is bigger. The bigger ball, in this experiment, also shows that its acceleration is faster. This is suggests that mass of the ball may be related to its velocity and its acceleration.

This experiment might show the general relationship between the size of the ball and its acceleration and velocity, but the numbers presented aren't completely accurate. Four different people timed the time using a stopwatch and everybody's reflex is different, so it might take someone longer to see the ball hit the wall and stop the stopwatch. Also, one person let the ball roll down the ramp, and another person timed it, so they might not have started at the same time. This creates pretty significant inaccuracies in the numbers presented above. A better way to do this would have been to use a machine, which would let go of the ball down the ramp the same time it started the time. Despite these errors and uncertainties, the data collected and calculated above shows the trend we needed to see.